Do switches use the fastest route available between computers?

October 12, 2005 3:02 PM

I have 4 Gigabit switches for my network and one 10/100 router. Can/should I hook each switch up to the router and then also plug each switch into each other switch to improve internet performance while still maintaining Gigabit on my LAN?
posted by hoborg to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

No. Your internet connection is likely one to two orders of magnitude slower than your network. Nothing you do to your network will make the packets go out your router any faster.

Don't put multiple connections between switches unless you really know what you're doing.
posted by ldenneau at 3:28 PM on October 12, 2005

No, you should do what b1tr0t said. An ethernet segment is not supposed to contain loops, which is what you are proposing. Higher end hardware runs something called Spanning Tree Protocol, which basically turns off redundant ports to prevent loops. In that case, you'll get one switch connected to the router and the other three chained through it. But b1tr0t's configuration is much better.
posted by sbutler at 5:10 PM on October 12, 2005

Response by poster: I'm aware I won't get faster internet throughput, just thought I might get more efficient throughput. Thanks for the info; I knew it sounded too good to be true :P
posted by hoborg at 8:41 PM on October 12, 2005